The answer is, in short: Lots more Republicans are unhappy about the job Ryan is doing than felt the same way about Boehner or Gingrich, or Democrats felt about Pelosi.

More than three in ten (31%) of Republicans or Republican leaners disapprove of how Ryan is doing the job as Speaker. That's significantly higher than the number of GOPers who didn't like the job Gingrich (23% disapproval) or Boehner (19%) were doing.

"He's being punished by Republicans for not being able to pull together the GOP to pass the [American Health Care Act]," explained Neil Newhouse, a prominent Republican pollster. "It seems he's shouldering the blame rather than Trump."

A Republican House member and Ryan ally, granted anonymity to speak candidly about Ryan, echoed that sentiment. "Just like the [healthcare] bill itself, he is the victim of the Freedom Caucus, which cannot pass legislation on its own, but has the ability to stop anything," said the GOP member. "When they do, they damage the president, the Speaker and the entire Republican Conference as well. They possess the most dangerous thing in politics -- power without accountability."

The thing with Gerrymandering ridings is that you try and spread your support to take as many of the other guys as possible. It doesn't create votes it just spreads them to best advantage. For every extra riding the votes are used to win, the margin of victory drops. Still very unfair of course. But the other side of the coin is that if the gerrymandering sides' support craters then a bunch of the thin margin victories can turn into defeats.

Here’s the other thing we know and which cases like the Georgia special election on Tuesday — and the one in Kansas last week — serve to demonstrate: Trump can’t defy gravity. These were bad results for Republicans. They’re consistent with what you’d expect from a public that would like to elect some Democrats to counterbalance an unpopular president and the Republicans’ hold on both branches of Congress.

You can debate exactly how bad these elections were for Republicans, of course. Each special election is subject to its own circumstances. But the narrative that “Democrats don’t have any wins yet” is dumb. Kansas’s 4th Congressional District, where Democrat James Thompson lost to Republican Ron Estes by just under 7 percentage points, is as red as Alabama. A Democrat coming close there is the sort of thing you’d see only in a really bad or perhaps even catastrophic midterm for the GOP.

The Georgia case is more ambiguous. Democrat Jon Ossoff — after winning a 48 percent plurality of the vote in the all-parties primary on Tuesday — is roughly even money to win the runoff against Republican Karen Handel. But the district has changed a lot, having gone from extremely red in 2012 to competitive in 2016, when Hillary Clinton lost to Trump by less than 2 percentage points there. I’m on the side that says the result on Tuesday is more consistent with a pretty bad outcome for Republicans in 2018, rather than a really bad one, although that might change depending on how the runoff goes.

Critics point to Northam’s stances on sanctuary cities and natural gas pipelines as possible reasons for the struggles. But the predominant issue may be that no Democrat, no matter their rural credentials, appeals to rural voters who have been turning away from the party for years — a big warning sign for Democrats hoping to compete in dozens of rural-rooted Senate, House and gubernatorial elections around the country next year.

It’s one reason why Republicans still believe that they can pull an upset in the Nov. 7 Virginia election, despite Northam leading in most public polling. Northam's campaign believes he is doing well enough in the state’s rural corners to win, given Democrats' strength in fast-growing Northern Virginia. Northam’s own internal polling in October showed Republican Ed Gillespie getting 49 percent to Northam’s 36 percent in the rural Bristol, Roanoke and Harrisonburg television markets — which President Donald Trump won 62 percent to 34 percent in 2016 (while losing Virginia to Hillary Clinton).

While Gillespie wasn’t hitting Trump's heights, a potential warning sign of his own, Northam's rural polling was little better than Clinton's final result in last year's presidential race — and below the levels President Barack Obama, John Kerry and Al Gore reached in the previous four presidential elections, when they lost the region but still squeezed more votes out of it. The trend has left Democrats more reliant on high urban and suburban turnout, and not every state has the same booming suburbs to counterbalance Democrats’ rural losses. Rural Democrats worry the party still sees them as an unnecessary afterthought.

The party’s candidate for Virginia governor grew up in the rural reaches and boasts a military background. But he’s doing no better than Clinton.

Bannon is full of it. Trump was involved even tweeting yesterday or today about supporting Gillespie. These results, both states went Democrat tonite, have national implications, and perhaps the Democrats will win the elections in 2018.

SeekingAPoliticalHome wrote:

Bannon - This race is about Trumpism with out Trump. Can rep candidates win on trump messages without trump himself. CNN Projection stand by. Different race.

I’d add to Perry’s point that this result came in a week when there were several key Republican retirements in Congress. So there was already a lot of worry, but before, Trump might have been able to say, “Don’t worry, because polls always overrate Democrats and they never win elections.” Now, that’s going to sound a bit emptier.

Virginia, although won by Clinton in 2016, looks like 9% win for the Democrats tonite, which is an increase of Clinton's margin by 50%. Considering all their infighting, this is a very impressive win for the Democrats, and maybe the beginning of Americans actually realizing what kind of situation/problem they now have in the WH.